The impact of perceived characteristics of technology based self service sales channels on customer experience

Change and speed are the key words in today's world. Marketing, which is one of the fastest changing disciplines, forces many routines, habits and concepts to be expanded and changed along with itself. The mentioned process of change has been effective in the emergence of many new concepts. Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which has risen to increase the demand for certain products and services, to enhance loyalty and to reduce costs. When we look at the basic mechanisms of CRM, we see an effort to understand the differences between customer groups and to develop effective strategies to match these differences. Recently, marketing academicians have realized that this approach is not enough and have developed the alternative experiential marketing concept. In traditional marketing studies, traditional means of communication are used; however, the aim of experiential marketing is to take advantage of many different communication processes to leave such a lasting impression by appealing to the emotions. Converting products and services into significant emotional and intellectual concepts besides their original purpose of existence has become significant for brands and companies. This has raised the importance of the concept of "experience" which brings some terms such as influence, sense, and emotion into play. Creating repeated purchases and customer loyalty is one of the most desirable behavioral outputs brands would like to achieve. Studies demonstrate that customer experience increases customer loyalty by 5%. This finding has triggered the companies to create effective experiences for their products and services portfolio. The positive effect of customer experience on customer loyalty also affects the market share of the brand and provides economic value. Marketing managers have also put the traditional marketing efforts aside and has directed their work and energy into creating value for customers. Traditional marketing is evaluated by analytical, quantitative and qualitative methods, it appeals to customers who take rational decisions, and focuses on product features and benefits. However, experiential marketing approach focuses on customers to enable them to undergo unique and special experiences. All of these changes in marketing disciplines indicate that the quality and functionality in the 1970s; brand and price in 1990s, information and distribution in early 2000s, and experience in around 2010 have become dominant factors in marketing. Marketing practices have also changed accordingly, and have focused on service rather than the product and then on the customer experience. Customer experience has been defined as the composition of all the output which is based on customer participation, is a combination of pleasant memories and feelings, and is not easy to imitate. Moreover, it occurs at the contact points, includes two dimensions being physical and emotional, provides the opportunity to manage the market and creates economic value. Technological developments in recent years have also huge impacts in the developments of the field Self-Service Technologies (SST), allows customers to do their work without the direct help of employees. The selection and implementation of SST in line with the objectives set by the company is a difficult area to process and manage for many companies. SST has attracted marketing interest by showing a great improvement based on the realized technological developments. There are some factors influencing customer acceptance, interest, and persistence in the use of SST. Besides, this approach has limited knowledge about customers' perception on SST and what influences their adaptation to it. It is a fact that technology affects all the processes of marketing management significantly. Customer experience management has also got its share from these effects. Mobile applications, web technologies, automated customer service contact points have differentiated the customer's total experience and influenced the value offered to customers. Technological developments have forced the brands to change their strategies to be able to manage the customer experience more effectively. Customer experience has started by the emergence of automated call service technology in the customer service departments in the 1970s. In the 1980s, computer technology has faced the acceleration in large-scale data mining capabilities with the result of more customer visibility. The Internet has created a huge revolution in the 1990s and has almost reached its peak with the development and expansion of social media and smart technology in 2000s. After 2010, the increase in the use of tablets and social media, is the period of the digital lives getting predominance. The customer experience at this stage is carried out in a multi-channel, digital and selective environment. SST reduces costs, saves time and shows its impact on the customer experience. Developments in computer and internet technology have allowed SST to create more customer experience and generated more space to be able to do so. At this point, the need for adapting the technologies into an integrated brand experience has emerged. Customer experience, including the use of the SST process, appears as the output of the entire service process. Studies in the literature on technology-based self-service channels focus prominently on the positive and negative variables affecting the use of SST. SST use offers lots of different experience possibilities to the customer. All these developments influence the change in the perception of the brand, have impact on future customer behavior and customer profitability. The activities and interactions realized through SST mean both opportunities and difficulties for the customers. Many companies focus on planning effective customer experiences to be able to get differential advantage in the competition. This situation has become a driving force for brands to understand the factors affecting the customer experience. When we consider the services sector, SSTs, leaving a positive impact on the customer experience, appears to be an exception as customer value has increased with the introduction of this technologies to the services sector. It is a fact that technology-based services impact purchase behavior of consumers; however, there are few studies on the subject. In a group of studies in the literature; the perceived characteristics of a technology often appear to be associated with the embracement and use of or an intention to buy the product or service based on that technology. Studies usually focus superficially on technology and particularly on SST based services. How the total customer experience is therefore affected is not emphasized in the literatüre. With the development of SST, the companies have realized that it is important not only to communicate with the customer but also have more contact and therefore have increased their contact points. In today's world, in which the communication is very intense and people are exposed to numerous stimulations continuously; there are many factors influencing customers experience on institutions, services and products. One of these factors is technology. For this reason, how consumers perceive SST channels is considered in this study as an important factor. Therefore, the perception of customers with respect to different characteristics of SST channels has been analyzed in this study. In today's world, in which competition is intense and has evolved into different platforms; companies face many strategic issues and problems related to the such issues as to how business will attract and engage consumers, how consumers will experience the goods and services and if they would keep using them, and how to reach new customers and how to create impact on customer loyalty. There are many studies in the literature examining the relation of the customer satisfaction and loyalty with word of mouth (WOM), but the relation of these concepts to the customer experience has not yet been studied enough. Besides, there are studies showing that customer experience is an important point to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty. Some researchers claim that customer's experience influences satisfaction which affects loyalty. Previous research conducted also reveals that the customer experience affects WOM. There are also some studies available showing that customer experience has more impact on customer loyalty and WOM than on customer satisfaction.The degree of customer satisfaction is taken as a measure to determine the value that the consumers perceive in their consumption process The service or product satisfaction of the consumer together with positive WOM are the most important indicators for the marketing performance of the companies. This situation offers many benefits to companies. When all these mentioned points are considered, it is crucial to accept that the fundamental objective of companies and businesses have to ensure customer satisfaction. This study analyzes the experiences of passengers using SST channels for one of the largest airline companies in Turkey. Thus; it is aimed to measure the effect of these customer experiences on general customer experience quality and its impact on customer satisfaction, and how that affects the loyalty and WOM. An original model on this subject in conjunction together with a literature study has been developed and evaluated in-depth through interviews with two professionals from two different sectors and then been finalized by the focus group study. A preliminary test has been performed before the final model testing stage, and the content clarity of the relevant questionnaire has been tested in order to measure the required variables. After all, the pre-testing of the questionnaire was finalized and the field study has been launched. For the survey, passengers traveling by airline within the last 6 months have been selected and sampling is done by convenience sampling method among the customers using large shopping centers in Istanbul and long distance passengers of the Istanbul Sea Bus. By this way, 530 questionnaires have been collected, and after the filtration of incomplete questionnaires , this number has decreased to 506; which are tested through using SEM. For this, SPSS 18 and AMOS programs were used. The impact of the perceived features of SST on perceived customer experience and this influencing the customer satisfaction affecting loyalty and informal communication have been revealed. As a result of this study, the statements of SST, Customer Experience, and Behavioral Results constructs are grouped under different dimensions than their expressions in literature and named accordingly. SST dimensions, instead of 5 different dimensions classified in the literature, are grouped under 4 dimensions. The dimensions of personal control variables in literature are distributed to other dimensions, while two variables were not classified under any category. Customer experience related statements are grouped under 6 dimensions rather than 4 dimensions mentioned in the literature. Four new variables have emerged from the focus groups might influence the number of dimensions of Customer Experience in this study. The variables of Behavioral results are grouped in 2 dimensions instead of 3 dimensions as a difference to the literature and 3 variables have not entered into any category. Thus, it is observed that SST's perceived characteristics affect the perceived quality of the customer experience positively, which influences the quality of the customer experience resulting in positive communication and customer satisfaction from WOM.